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Beef and Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, hare, vegetables, herbs, and optional port wine and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef and Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine beef, hare, water, salt, onions, celery, carrots, savory herbs, peppercorns, and cloves in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for at least three hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. If the soup is not thick enough, mix arrowroot with a little cold broth and add it to the soup, then let the soup simmer for a moment.

  2. Serve hot, optionally adding port wine and forcemeat balls.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Breaks down during long simmering to add rich, savory body to the broth.
Hare
Adds deep, gamey meat flavor and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic depth into the broth as they cook.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the soup when it is heated, if it needs more body.
Bread
Crumbled bread softens and helps give the soup body.

The step that matters

Thickening with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be mixed with cold liquid first so it does not clump, then the soup must simmer briefly so the starch fully thickens it.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, celery, carrot, clove, bread, pepper):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, celery, carrot, clove, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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